Allegra
by Roadrunnerz
Summary: "I never imagined I'd be the only one around to tell her all this." Richard Castle remembers three moments in time with his youngest daughter. Future fic! (Character death)
1. Ten

**A/N** : My first attempt at a Castle fic! It's a story about the father-daughter bond, but it's meant to be a love story of sorts too. Will be three chapters long. Feedback is always welcome.

Usual fanfic disclaimers apply. These characters don't belong to me.

And lastly, huge thanks to my fanfic partners-in-crime, Kel and Annie, for your enthusiasm and for keeping my grammar in check.

* * *

 _ **Allegra**_ _(/əˈlɛɡrə/; Italian: [alˈlɛːɡra]) is a female given name of Italian origin_ _ **meaning**_ _joy (happy) or lively._

 _ **Ten**_

She turned ten last week.

My baby girl's been on this planet for over a decade and it seems like I changed her diapers only yesterday.

I'm sitting on a fat log that's lying on the side of a forest trail and watch her long arms make their way across the monkey bars, one by one, in quick succession. She's _so_ fast.

Watching my daughter fly across the bars makes me cringe. I'm pretty sure it's hazardous for my cardiac health. So I watch her with one eye open and for a instant I wish I believed in a god of sorts, so I could shoot him (or her) a quick prayer to end this day without any broken bones for my kid.

We're at a forested area about an hour north of Manhattan. A park with a giant, outdoor obstacle course. There are old tires strung together, climbing walls, rope swings, and a host of other crazy contraptions you couldn't pay me to go on. But this is what she wanted for her birthday and because she has me wrapped around her little finger, I caved. Thankfully all those parenting books that scoff at indulging your kid's whims and lecture you that you'll end up with a spoiled and entitled brat, are dead wrong. Because, like her older sister Alexis, she's neither.

"Slow down, Allegra!" I yell, cupping my hands over the sides of my mouth in the hopes that she can hear me better. But hearing and listening are two different things. So she ignores me. I'd love to say she got that from her mother, but I think this particular trait is all me.

If Kate were here right now, she'd probably laugh and call it karma. Payback for the all the times I didn't listen to her. Not that she really believed karma or any of that stuff.

Allegra leaps off the monkey bars, hits the ground running and trips over a root and nearly falls, one hand touching the ground, before stumbling back up ungracefully in order to tackle the climbing wall.

Her clumsiness makes me chuckle a little. It brings back memories.

A couple of years ago she went through her first major growth spurt.

Suddenly she was all legs and arms, long gangly limbs that she didn't know what to do with. She still isn't happy about it because all she sees when she looks into the mirror is a skinny girl who's taller than most of the boys in her class and one whose pre-teen face hasn't quite grown into her dramatic features yet. The wide-set eyes, full lips and high cheek bones that are all Kate Beckett. (Lucky kid, I'd say. Rugged handsomeness probably wouldn't have fared as well on her face).

Anyway, during her growth spurt she'd trip over her own feet sometimes climbing the stairs at our loft. And the first time I took her skating in Central Park she ended up face down on the ice, spread-eagle. Part of me still regrets not taking a photo when I had the chance and keeping it to blackmail her for when she turns into a moody, rebellious teenager. Instead, I panicked. I jumped on the ice, collided with no less than two skaters and cursed them both before scooping her up in my arms.

I told her we could call it quits after that (and I really hoped she'd say yes) but she's stubborn, _so damn stubborn_ , and for that one I'm totally going to blame her mother, who was the most wilful and stubborn (and infuriating and amazing) woman I'd ever known.

Allegra got back on the ice and kept trying until she could finally do a few laps without landing on her stomach. It was a process that took a couple of hours. We were both freezing at the end of it.

That night, I made her an extra large cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream, marshmallows and shaved chocolate on top. She deserved it.

But anyhow, back to the present.

She doesn't make it up the climbing wall on her first try. Or the second. It's the third one that gets her to the top and when she does get there and flings one of her long legs over the top, her fingers don't get a firm hold of the ledge. She slips.

In a split second, Allegra loses her balance and falls down the other side with a thud.

I jump off the log I'm sitting with a speed I didn't think I still had. Or ever had.

My heart's in my throat when I get to the other side of the climbing wall where my daughter's lying on the ground, her arms and face covered with mud as she makes a clumsy effort to push herself back up. I kneel down next to her, totally oblivious of the mud and dirt that's getting all over me too and carefully help her back up, steadying her. I don't even notice that my hands are shaking until I see her face light up in a lopsided grin.

"You better not have filmed that, Dad."

"Are you okay?" I ask, because seriously, who can fall off that thing headfirst and be okay?

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be okay?"

She wipes the mud off her pants with her hands and when she rolls back a sleeve I notice that one of her elbows is bleeding. "I can't believe I finally got over that wall. How cool is that?"

"Cool isn't what I was thinking."

"Did you see how high it is?" she asks me incredulously. How can I possibly not be impressed is what she's implying.

"Yeah...yeah, I did."

"I didn't think I could do it," she points out, jutting out her muddied chin in a defensive little gesture of pride.

 _I didn't doubt it for a moment._

"You're amazing," I tell her, because it's true. And because she's so damn pleased with herself, I don't ruin it. I bite my tongue and don't add that I also think she's crazy and reckless. (Just like her mother)

She uses the sleeve of her sweatshirt to wipe some mud off her face and turns to keep going, her blue eyes already set on the next prize. The rope swings that dangle over a small pool of water.

"Whoa...not so fast." I manage to grab her sweatshirt just before she gets away.

"Dad...what are you doing? I'm only halfway done!"

"Not before I clean your elbow," I point to the blood that's now starting to smear all over her skinny arm.

"Ah come on, Dad," she whines and tries to weasel out of my hold. She doesn't succeed. "It doesn't even hurt."

"I don't care." Sometimes even I manage to stand firm where my daughters are concerned. Especially when there's blood dripping from their limbs. "I brought a first aid kit and we're gonna use it to patch that up."

She protests some more but eventually follows me back to the log where we left both our back packs. Mine is full of all sorts of outdoor equipment that I won't need for this trip. There's a Swiss army knife that's got a spoon inside it and a compass that I barely know how to use.

But I am glad I brought the First Aid kit.

Given how plucky she is, I'm sure Allegra's a world record holder when it comes to cuts and bruises and scrapes. Over the years I've gotten really good at fixing them up. I'm sure I could do it blindfolded and in record time.

I make her sit down on the log and whip the First Aid kit out my backpack, grab some cleaning wipes, antiseptic ointment and a bunch of band-aids.

"Ouch!" She pulls back her arm when I clean it. Guess she's capable of feeling pain now that there's no wall to scale in front of her. She glares at me. "Dad! Don't press so hard."

"Hold still," I admonish her. She does, just long enough for me to get the job done. My thumb smoothes out the band-aid and I'm pleased with my handiwork.

Allegra looks at it sceptically before mumbling a reluctant 'thanks'.

"Why don't we take a break?" I suggest. We've been here almost two hours, my daughter already looks like she trekked through a jungle. Plus, I'm kind of hungry. Mind you, I'm always hungry. "Let's have lunch."

"Okay," she agrees with surprising ease. She's like her mother when it comes to food. She sees it as a necessary pit stop. Fuel for all the energy she's burning every minute of the day. Sometimes I literally have to pin her down and force her to slow down and eat. Unlike her older sister, Alexis, who enjoys the awesomeness of hot fudge sundae as much as I do.

Allegra grabs her own backpack and hoists it onto her lap. She opens it to take out the sandwiches, fruits and granola bars I gave her this morning.

When she opens her bag something familiar catches my eye.

"Hey...what's that?" I point to the item in question, partly hidden inside her bag.

Her blue eyes look up at me and she flutters her long lashes, hesitating instead of answering my question. It's as though she's debating whether to answer with the truth or a lie, before deciding on the truth.

"It's the Nikki Heat comic book."

That's what I _thought_ it was even though I didn't want to believe my eyes! The thought of her looking at... _those scenes_. In vivid colour illustration. It makes me a little nauseous.

I grab the graphic novel and yank it out of her bag.

"Where'd you get this?"

She hesitates again, then looks at me with a certain defiance and spits it out. "It was a gift. I asked for it, for my birthday...because the guy at the comic book store wouldn't sell it to me."

"That's because it's _not_ a comic book!" I point out angrily. "It's a graphic novel for adults!"

I don't want to think about who got it for her, but I've got an idea. I'm willing to bet money on Espo. He's even worse than me. Javi can never say no to her. I am so calling him tonight and giving him a piece of my mind.

What the hell was he thinking?

I fume a bit then realize, I won't. Call him that is. Even though I'm so sure it was him.

But I owe him way too much to get worked up over a book.

In fact, I dedicated my last Nikki Heat book to him. Well, not just Esposito, but my entire 12th precinct family. Him and Kevin and Jenny, and Lanie, especially Lanie. Aunt Lanie who patiently brings out the girl that's hidden underneath my tomboy with the muddy knees. She takes Allegra out for brunch once a month, choosing a different fancy Manhattan hotel every time (without even letting me pay for it and not before coming over to do my daughter's hair and nails) She also calls her almost every day for no other reason than to check up on her and say hi.

Espo's the one who takes my daughter to see the Yankees in the summer and the Islanders in the winter. He's taught Allegra enough Spanish so she can now chat with Maria in her native tongue when she comes by to clean the loft once a week. He also has the patience of Job when she randomly bombards him with endless questions about her mother's early days as a cop.

Ryan and Jenny are the ones who look after her when I go on a book tour once a year. I often leave her with the two of them and their kids for days at a time. Their oldest daughter is a few years older than Allegra, their second, a son, is nearly the same age and their youngest, another girl, is a few years younger. Their kids are my daughter's best friends and sometimes I have a hard time getting her to come back home after her stays with the Ryans. That's how much she loves it there. We even spent last Christmas at their house.

I always thought of them as my friends back when I was still helping out at the precinct, but in reality, all of them were Beckett's friends first. I became a part of their circle only through my partnership with her. Friends by association. Because of it, I never imagined they'd be so fiercely loyal to me and my daughter long after Kate left us. I never thought they'd become my own family.

Allegra never met her grandmothers and barely got to know her mother. But, between myself, a big sister that showers her with a love every single day and a whole team of friends from the 12th Precinct that adore her, Allegra is definitely not alone.

I'll never be able to thank the boys and Lanie enough for that. For giving my daughter a family.

"I don't care about the sex stuff," Allegra tells me, swiftly whipping my thoughts back to the present. To the book I have in my lap.

So she's already seen them and she acts like it's no big deal. My little girl. Looking at sex scenes that were basically the result of me fantasizing about her mother. Long before it all became real. This is seriously awkward. It's making me uneasy and I'm not sure how to deal with it.

"I only wanted it because of the pictures, Dad," she explains, taking out a sandwich from a freezer bag.

"This..." I'm holding up the novel in my hand. "This is not cool, Allegra. You do know there's a reason I wouldn't let you get this book, right?"

"Sorry," she mumbles. No longer looking at me. She first stares down at her sandwich and then takes a tiny bite, her rueful face looking like she's lost her appetite. Suddenly I'm the one who feels bad. She doesn't mind defying me, but she hates to disappoint me and I've made her think she did.

"Hey..." My anger fades and one of my hands reaches over to her chin, lifting it up. "Tell me something, why do you want to see the pictures?"

She shrugs. "I don't know."

"I think you do."

She frowns. Hating that I know her so well.

"Sometimes when you read me parts of the books, I can't picture it...I can't picture Mom as Nikki."

"How come?"

"I dunno..." My daughter's serious now. Trying to find a way to explain. "Nikki's so...she's so badass. So strong and so beautiful."

 _Badass?_

"You can't picture your Mom being those things?" I question her in disbelief. "You've seen photos of her, right?"

"Mom was pretty too," she acknowledges.

"She was so much more than that, sweetheart," I try to explain. But it's hard. How do you put into words all the million little things that made Kate Beckett extraordinary? It's not possible. Even for someone who's very good with words.

But I have to try. Have to make her realize it's her mother who's the hero in our story. Not Nikki Heat.

I put down my sandwich and open the graphic novel. There are three of them currently in print and I wasn't sure which one this was just from looking at the cover.

Ah...the locked basement room and the tiger. Nikki and Rook waking up disoriented and handcuffed to each other.

"Pretty sure Mom never escaped from a tiger," says my daughter, with a certain smugness that reminds me of someone else I once knew. The little sneak already read the whole thing.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"I'll have you know, this one is based one a real case that your mother and I worked on. _All of it_ is true, including the tiger." Okay, maybe not the sex at the end part. Or the motorcycle.

"No way. You're lying, Dad."

"Scouts honour," I tell her, and I make the sign with my fingers, linking my thumb and pinky finger while holding up the rest. It's a sacred thing with me and Allegra. We need it because sometimes I do mess with her for the heck of it. Because it thrills me to see her clever mind trying to figure out the truth from the fibs. She's only ten, but she does it to me too.

But making the sign lets us both know we're dead serious. No messing around when we use the sign.

"Really?"

"Really." She moves a little closer, squishing her skinny body next to mine when I start flipping through the pages. I start reading her parts of it because I know how much she loves it when I read to her. She tells me I'm the best storyteller in the world (She doesn't know it but that's probably the best compliment you could ever give a writer) and same as when I read her parts of the actual books, I skip through anything that I don't think she's old enough for. We've had the talk a long while ago and of course she knows about sex and babies. She probably knows a lot more than that at this point, but I don't need my mind going there right now.

"This part is different from what happened to me and your Mom," I explain. "Rook's the one who gets out of the room first here. Then he helps Nikki out by reaching for her."

"So what really happened?"

"Your Mom got off the box before me. I helped lift her up, 'cause it was her idea to climb out. She wasn't very good at waiting for me to rescue her."

Allegra smiles and takes a bigger bite of her sandwich. "So why did you change it in the novel?"

"My publisher told me I had to let Rook be the hero every now and then. I should've told her to stuff it but I guess at the time my ego was okay with that."

"So you're saying Mom was even more badass than Nikki?"

"Heck, yeah," I'm the one who looks at her incredulously now. "Way more. A zillion times more badass."

Allegra blushes. Pride. That's what I see on her face now.

Mission accomplished.

"Did you guys ride off on her bike afterwards too? After you caught the guys that were stealing the tigers?'

For a second I debate saying yes. But then I remember that I made the sign. Scout's honour. "Nah...I put that in the novel only because I thought it'd be cool. For her to put on her leather jacket and for them to ride off into the sunset together."

"I love that motorcycle," Allegra sighs, running her index finger over the picture of the red bike.

 _Of course you do._

"So Mom didn't ride a bike?"

"I didn't say that," I tell her. "She had her motorcycle license and the same leather jacket that Nikki has in the books."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously," I tell her. "I mean, by the time we were together, she didn't own a bike anymore, but every now and then she'd take Uncle Espo's Suzuki out for a spin, thinking I didn't know. Until we moved in together and he'd forward some of his speeding tickets to us in the mail."

Allegra grins. A giant, conspiratorial grin full of life and joy. Knowing now that she shares something else with her mother. Something new. A love of speed and bikes and... the ability to give me heart palpitations.

"Do you think I'm like her?"

 _You have no idea._

"Yeah..." I answer, the word getting caught in my throat. "I do."

"Okay." Judging from her little nod, I think she's alright with that and that makes me proud.

I close the novel and we finish our sandwiches without another word, watching two teenage boys try (and fail) to climb the wall she just scaled.

When she's done eating, Allegra loosens the pony tail holding back her thick, dark brown hair and then puts it back up, ready to conquer the next obstacle. Needing her unruly hair out of the way in order to do it.

"Are you gonna make me give the book back?" she asks, standing up.

She wanted it because she needed to see her mother come to life. As if I'd ever have the heart to take that from her.

"No," I tell her truthfully. "You can keep it. But I might rip out a couple of pages."

Allegra rolls her eyes, exactly the same way someone else I once loved used to do.

Then she bends down and gives me a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks, Dad."

With those two words, Allegra runs off, her long legs catapulting her towards the rope swings, completely unaware that she holds my heart in her hands with every fearless step she takes.


	2. Twenty

**A/N** : Big thanks to those who stopped by with their feedback and those to whom I couldn't respond personally! Totally appreciated. And huge thanks as always to Kel and Annie.

* * *

 **Chapter Two**

 _Twenty_

"We're ready!" Lanie hollers from upstairs.

I'm sitting on the couch in the midst of reading an article about manned missions to Mars. I'm engrossed in it because I know first hand how hazardous it can be to prepare for one. But I put down the paper, take off my reading glasses and turn towards the staircase.

There's a framed photo in my line of vision.

The photo sits on a shelf next to the railing. I took it nearly eighteen years ago, when Allegra was two years old. In the photo she's trying to squirm out of her mother's grasp but Kate catches her just before she succeeds, by looping her fingers through the back of our daughter's overalls. My camera caught their faces in the instant that they both realized what was happening. Allegra's expression is all shock and awe at being caught and my wife is biting her bottom lip with glee, eyes lighting up with smug satisfaction. She who catches killers, ninjas and zombies, wasn't about to let her own toddler escape.

I love the photo because it tells a story. Kate hated it because her hair was a mess and there was an applesauce stain on the t-shirt she was wearing. But she agreed that if I did a bit of photo shopping, I could frame it. So I did. Even though she never got to see it on the shelf.

It was the last photo that I took of the two of them together.

I see Lanie coming down the stairs first. Lanie, who kindly does double duty as my daughter's personal stylist before all her big events, has a massive grin on her face and she's followed by Allegra, who, literally, takes my breath away as I stand up.

She's stunning. And when I say stunning what I really mean is crazy, indescribably beautiful.

The two women make their way down the staircase and Lanie points both arms towards the result of her labour of love. Over an hour of fussing, primping and styling. "Well?" she asks.

Allegra's wearing a gorgeous, low-cut blue dress that brings out her blue eyes and makes for a perfect contrast to her dark-brown hair, which cascades over her shoulders in one flawless wave after another.

My little girl looks like an exquisite work of art and I can't stop staring and marvelling that I could have had some hand in creating it.

"Wow..." is what comes out of my mouth.

"That's all you got, writer boy?" Lanie shoots back, unimpressed. "'Wow'? You're a walking thesaurus and all you can come up with is 'wow'?"

Allegra smiles. "Less is more when it comes to my Dad. He isn't usually speechless. Trust me."

She's right. But I am at this moment.

I knew she'd look good because Allegra's been going on about going to this thing for months now. This United Nations gala was bigger than prom or graduation in her world. But this is way past looking good. She's a knock-out.

I listen to Allegra thank Lanie for her efforts, which she downplays, saying she didn't have all that much to do given what she had to work with (I agree with her but don't say anything) while my daughter insists that's not true and that all credit goes to her. Women.

They hug once more before Lanie steps over to where I'm standing. I give her a hug too. She deserves more than that really for all that she's done for my kid, all she is _still_ doing. "Thank you," I whisper into her ear. "This meant the world to her. Especially since Alexis couldn't be here."

"Don't you thank me for this," she whispers back after making sure Allegra's out of earshot. "Means the world to _me_ , that you let me be part of her life. Makes me feel like my best friend's still here with me."

I don't say anything else because I don't really trust my voice right now. It doesn't happen that often anymore. That I miss her so much that it hurts. But it's happening now and it hits me with a force that almost cuts off the air to my lungs. It's the combination of looking at the photo, then seeing Allegra walk down the stairs, a carbon-copy of her mother, coupled with Lanie's words. It's all a bit much. Even for me.

I push the sensation away as I kiss Lanie on the cheek and walk her to the door.

 _Not now_ , I scold myself. _This is her night._

I wait until Lanie's stepped into the elevator before I close the door and turn back to my daughter. It gives me the time I need to compose myself. Something I've gotten really good at over the years. Kate would be proud.

I beam at her. "Ready?"

I'm not going to the event. I'm only her chauffeur, dropping her off at the UN headquarters on 1st Avenue, where she'll meet up with her boyfriend.

Allegra doesn't say anything and for the first time since she came down the stairs, my eyes wander beyond the gorgeous facade and take a good look at her face. What I see is not at all what I expect.

She looks absolutely miserable.

Almost as miserable as the she did the day our dog died when she was fourteen. When she wouldn't come out of her room for two days. Alexis spent a lot of hours on the phone with Allegra then, trying to coax her baby sister out of her despair. Even though she'd been working in Geneva at the time and they were all long distance calls.

"Sweetheart, what's wrong?"

"I can't go to this thing tonight...I can't..." she starts, her voice chocking up mid-sentence. The tears are starting to fall.

She's not a crier. Of my two girls, Alexis is the one who wears her heart on her sleeve, not Allegra. My youngest is a brooder, like her mother.

But wow...she's crying now. It's like watching a dam burst in front of me. A flood of tears she can no longer hold back after letting the first ones escape.

I have no idea what's causing her grief but it doesn't matter. I take her in my arms and let her cry. I tell her it's okay to let it all out and she does, in big, wracking sobs that make her body tremble.

My shirt is wet from her tears by the time she's done and finally lets go of me.

I take her hand and lead her towards the couch, grabbing a box of tissues on the way. I hand it to her and she takes a couple, blows her nose and then reaches for a couple more to wipe her face. Her beautiful make up is ruined. There are streaks of black and purple running down her cheeks and bloodshot eyes, along with the scary blend of colours swirling around them. She's more suited for a zombie walk now than a United Nations gala.

"I'm sorry, Dad..." she says softly. There's still a hitch in her voice and for a second I think she might start sobbing all over again. But she doesn't.

"No need," I tell her.

I get a sniffle in return.

"Do you wanna tell me what's going on?"

She blinks a couple of times, squeezing out a few more tears before answering. "I broke up with Damian this morning."

 _Ah..._

"I'm sorry, sweetheart," I tell her. But that's a bit of a lie, to be honest. I never liked the guy all that much. Rich, handsome and very well-connected Damian Cartwright was supposedly _the_ catch at her college and part of me always suspected that's why Allegra wanted him so bad. Because no one else managed to get him.

But I learned my lesson with Alexis when it comes to meddling in my daughters' love lives. So I didn't say anything. Allegra was eighteen when she started dating Damian. Old enough to make her own decisions. At least she wasn't telling me she wanted to move in with the guy. Nor was he sleeping on the couch. Memories of Pi suddenly enter my thoughts. I shudder a little and quickly push them aside.

"I'm not sorry," Allegra tells me. She grabs another tissue before she turns to me. Done with crying. That's my girl. "I'm sorry that I didn't do it sooner. I've been such a fool."

"What happened?" I ask gently.

"There were so many clues and little things I should've noticed a long time ago."

"Like what?"

"The way he treated people, or I guess, _certain_ people. He'd belittle the waiter at a restaurant for not taking away his plate fast enough. Once he yelled at a fast food worker 'cause he gave him the wrong change. It was no big deal, Dad. He was off by a quarter and I'm so sure it was an honest mistake, but Damian threatened to get him fired." Allegra pauses and looks at me sadly. "He was younger than us, maybe sixteen and he didn't even speak much English and he was so apologetic. Damian terrified him and I just stood there and watched. I didn't even say anything!"

Her eyes start to water again. Shame is what I see in them now.

"Damian had a tough exam that morning so I figured he just needed to let his frustrations out somewhere...but I did that all the time. I made excuses for him." Another tear rolled down her face and she didn't bother wiping it away. "I'm so ashamed...that I never did anything or said anything. It makes me just like him, doesn't it? But you raised me to be better than that. I know you did."

"Hey..." I take her hand and squeeze it. "You don't have to be this hard on yourself. You loved him. Love blinds us sometimes. Makes us incapable of seeing another person's faults."

She frowns, furrowing her brows in thought. "I don't even think I loved him. I loved the idea of _being_ with him. Of having him, because no one else at school could say the same."

"So what changed this morning?"

"We went out for a coffee in Tribeca," she explained. "When we got back to his car there was a ticket on the windshield and the parking cop was still there. He just finished writing it. We' were only over the clock by about ten minutes, so Damian tries to charm him...asks him to let it go, that is was only a few minutes. But the parking cop says he can't. Not after he already wrote the ticket."

"And then?"

"I tell Damian to let it go. It's forty bucks, Dad. It's literally _nothing_ for him. But he doesn't...he loses it and starts yelling at the cop, telling him how pathetic he is. How sad it was that some guy in his forties is still wearing a uniform and writing up tickets for living. He asks him whether he even finished high school. Told him he probably doesn't understand the fine print on the back of the ticket."

By now I kind of want to punch Damian. Might still do it, if given the chance.

"I snapped," Allegra remembers. "Maybe it's cause this time it was a cop. It made me think of Uncle Espo and Kevin...they both wore uniforms before they became detectives. Even Mom was a beat cop at first. Damian would have looked down on all of them. That finally made me see him for who he is."

"Did you tell him all that?"

"Sort of. But I got so angry. I took forty dollars out of my wallet and threw it at him. He started laughing. Can you believe it? He said I was blowing everything out of proportion and needed to calm down." She pauses and there's a smirk on her face. "But I didn't want to calm down. It felt good. To be angry and see things clearly. I broke up with him right then...told him I wouldn't be his date tonight or for anything else. I ended up taking the subway home."

I bite back a smile and wish I could have been there. She can be so fierce sometimes, it's magnificent to watch. Fills me with the same pride I used to have when I watched her mother take control of an interrogation at the precinct.

"Why didn't you tell me any of this when you got home?" I question. Now that I think about it, we barely exchanged two words when she got home. I saw her come through the door and then head upstairs. She usually checks up on me and chats for a bit. Bugs me about what I'm working on. She loves being the first person in the world to see the rough drafts of my Nikki Heat books.

I should have suspected something was off. But I'm getting old and sometimes I miss her cues. (Correction. I am old. I just like to pretend I'm not).

Even so. Why would she have gone through with the whole farce of dressing up and having Lanie come over? Why would she pretend everything's okay right up until Lanie left?

"I was so confused when I got home," she explains when I ask her. "At first I didn't want to go tonight. Couldn't stand the thought of seeing him there. Then I changed my mind, I mean, yeah, I was his date...but we're in the same programme at college. I had my own invitation. I wanted to meet all these delegates and get a chance to make all these connections. When would I ever get that again?"

I sense a "but" coming my way.

"But... then I thought it over and asked myself if that's even what I wanted...to go into international law. Why did I choose pre-law? Is it because grandma was a lawyer or because it's what Alexis does? For so long I wanted to be like Alexis...but the thing is...I'm not her. I'm me. And right now, I don't even know who I am anymore." She blinks more tears away. "How sad is that? I'm twenty years old and I don't know who I am. Or what I want to do."

I lean in and kiss the top of her head. "Why? Because every other twenty-year old out there has got it all figured out?"

She groans. "You know what I mean."

I do. But I don't indulge her this time. Her emotions are reeling. Might not be the best time to make major life changes. For what it's worth, I do think she's passionate about law. Maybe not necessarily international law. Allegra's very hands-on and not all that big on diplomacy and politics.

"So you ended up deciding you didn't want to go tonight?"

She nodded.

"Why not call Lanie and let her know?"

"By the time I made up my mind it was less than an hour before she was supposed to come here," Allegra explains. "She really likes doing this stuff. Make up and hair and all that...sometimes I think she still misses Mom and doing these things, it helps. Helps Lanie not miss her so much."

 _I think you're right._

"You know what I think?"

"What?"

"If after everything you went through this morning, you still pulled yourself together to do that for Lanie, I think that's kind of extraordinary." I pull her close and give her a hug. "I'm proud of you, kid."

"I don't feel proud of anything lately..." she sighs dramatically. Sometimes I see traces of Martha Rodgers in her too. "I feel like everything's been for nothing. This dress. The make-up. Almost two years I wasted with a jerk that I don't even like just because I let other people convince me he's some sort of prize."

"Hey, hey..." I don't like it when she starts beating up on herself. Reminds me too much of someone else who had the same habit. "Stop that. Let's do something fun to make up for this mess tonight and talk about life decisions tomorrow."

"You don't have to try and make me feel better. I'm okay. "

She looks so young and lost right now. Twelve, rather than twenty.

" _Have to_?" I pretend that I'm horribly offended. (I kind of am). "Do I have to remind you that you just soaked my shirt with your tears? Making you feel better is an act of self-preservation for me."

She rolls her eyes and can't help a smile.

I'm good at that. Making her smile.

"There's a horror festival at the Ziegfeld," I mention. It's true. There is a movie playing there this week that I've been dying to see. It's about a horde of dogs that escape a lab experiment and start killing gondoliers in Venice. My daughter does love a good gore fest as much as I do.

She shrugs her shoulders. "Maybe..."

I give her a little nudge. "Get changed and then we'll decide."

"Okay."

"Hot chocolate?"

Another reluctant smile. "Okay."

She's not big on sweets but hot chocolate has been is her thing since she was five-years old. For a while, as a teenager, she was too old and too cool for hot chocolate. She switched to vanilla lattes. But I know hot chocolate is still her go-to beverage in bleak moments.

Allegra drags herself up the stairs and I make my way into the kitchen to steam some milk.

By the time I amble back to the sofa with two mugs of hot chocolate, overflowing with whipped cream, my daughter's already there. She takes one of the mugs from me and whispers a quiet thank you.

She's changed into jeans and a t-shirt and washed all the make-up off her face. The beautiful waves in her hair are the only remnant of Lanie's efforts.

We drink our hot chocolates in silence until both mugs are empty.

"Want me to check the movie listings?" I ask once I sense she's ready to talk.

"Can I ask you something, Dad? I was thinking about this a few days ago."

"Sure."

"My name...why'd you choose it?"

"What?" This is random.

"Allegra. It means joy and happiness."

"Maybe I wanted all my daughters to have three-syllable names starting with A?"

"Funny." Her face is serious. "Your Mom died the day I was born. Happiness must've been the last thing you felt. I don't know why I never thought to ask you this...but I should have, because it doesn't make sense."

I set my mug down on the coffee table. Her questions come out of the blue and I don't know how to respond. How to possibly explain all the things we felt that day. Not only on that day but in the nine months before she was born. It's not something I've ever really talked to her about.

But sometimes I forget that there's so much she doesn't know about our lives before she came into the world. I always assumed she'd hear a lot of this from her mother. I never imagined I'd be the only one around to tell her all this.

"I guess it's a good question."

I could start at the beginning. Maybe it'll make more sense that way.

"When we found your Mom was pregnant, we'd been trying for a while and were starting to think that it wasn't meant to be. She was almost forty."

"So you were...surprised?" Allegra asks.

"Surprised...yes." I've never told her any of this. "But mostly we were happy...stupidly happy."

Allegra smiles.

"Two weeks later we found out that Gram had cancer. When they caught it, it already started spreading. She had to start aggressive treatment right away."

My daughter's smile fades.

"We did everything we could to keep her spirits up and keep her comfortable during chemo...but at the same time your Mom had a rough time with her pregnancy. Constant morning sickness that left her with no energy. I told her to take time off work but she said she couldn't. There was a lot of drama at her new precinct at the time. There was a suspect who died in holding and the media scrutiny was brutal. As Captain it was all on her shoulders. She had her plate full trying to weed out some bad cops and gain the respect of the good ones. We fought a lot because I thought she needed cut back her insane hours but she refused. It was hard on Alexis too...to see Gram get weaker and weaker. For nearly nine months all of us were stressed and exhausted and cranky."

Allegra doesn't say anything. Just listens with rapt attention.

"A couple of weeks before you were born, Gram was admitted to the hospital. We all knew she wasn't going to come back home this time."

Allegra blinks and for a second I think she might cry again. Cry for the larger than life grandmother that she never had the chance to meet.

"The night your Mom went into labour, the doctors from Gram's hospital called me to tell me that they didn't think she'd last the night. That I'd want to be there."

It's not easy for me to talk about that night. It was overwhelming, in so many ways.

"I won't lie..." I admit. "I didn't want to be there. Didn't want to watch my mother die. I wanted to be with your Mom. To watch you come into world. I wanted life that night, not death...but your Mom insisted. Said I would regret it if I didn't and she was right. Alexis wanted to be there too and she needed me."

"Oh, Dad...I can't imagine having to make that choice..."

"Your grandma died around ten o'clock that night. I stayed at the hospital with Alexis for a couple of hours afterwards and we bawled and reminisced so much the nurses gave us each a box of tissues. Then your sister went to get me a cup of strong, disgusting coffee from the hospital cafeteria and stuffed me into a taxi, telling me I needed to go, to be with your mother. I told her to come too...but she wanted to stay there a bit longer. She needed some time alone with Gram."

"Wow..." Allegra struggles to digest it all.

"I told the taxi driver he needed to get there in ten minutes or less. That it was a matter of life and death."

"You did?"

I grin, needing to lighten both our sombre moods. "Nah...just messing with you."

Allegra slaps my shoulder. "You're unbelievable."

"I did tell him to hurry up though. Scout's honour."

"And then?"

"You were born at 12:37 am and I got there just after one in the morning. You were already half an hour old."

"Are you messing with me again?"

I chuckle. "Not this time." Truth is, I'm grateful she was born after midnight. It was only a few hours difference but I'm glad she doesn't share her birthday with the day my mother died. In my mind, they are two completely separate days. An ending and a beginning.

"I stepped into the maternity ward and there you were, in your mother's arms already. Perfect and healthy and screaming at the top of your lungs."

Allegra smirks. "Sorry."

"It's okay," I tell her. "One look and I was madly in love. Willing to forgive you for trying to shatter my eardrums."

"Oh stop it..."

There's more I want to tell my daughter but it's almost too intimate. I remember the look I gave Kate when I came into the room, the one that let her know how sorry I was that I missed it all. Sorry for every damn argument we had the last nine months. But she wouldn't have any of it, didn't even let me speak. All she did was pull me into her arms and tell me how much she loved me, how sorry she was for my loss, while squishing our newborn daughter between us and enveloping us both in her strength.

I didn't think I could love Kate Beckett any more than I already did, but that night proved me wrong.

"You know, you haven't answered my question."

"Why we named you Allegra?"

She nods.

"We threw around a lot of possibilities while your Mom was pregnant but by the time you were born we still hadn't decided. That night we even debated naming you after both your grandmothers. Johanna Martha."

Allegra's eyes widen. "Really?"

"Only for a moment," I tell her. "Your Mom shot down that idea as fast as I did. We didn't want you to drown in a legacy before you could walk. We wanted you to be you. No shoes to fill. And..." I smile. This is my favourite memory of the night. "More than anything else, you reminded us that even on the worst days, there's the possibility of joy. After seeing my mother die and watching Alexis grieve for her...I didn't think I was capable of feeling anything but numbness that night, but I was wrong. Because holding you, in my arms, so alive and so perfect, and knowing your mother was fine and healthy after bringing you into this world, it filled me with joy. That's how we chose your name."

Allegra's eyes are moist when she looks at me.

"Hey...this is a story with a happy ending," I chide her. "No more crying allowed."

She quickly wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. "Thanks for telling me."

I put an arm around her shoulders and pull her close. "Thanks for making me happy." I eye our empty cups of hot chocolate and have a sudden urge to get us out of this apartment. Make my daughter forget about her crummy ex-boyfriend and the weight of her past. "You know what would make me even happier? Going to see that movie about the killer dogs at the Ziegfeld."

Allegra pushes herself off the couch, but not before giving me a kiss on the cheek. "I have another idea."

She runs up the stairs. Two steps at a time. She's still so fast. Still trips over her own feet sometimes.

I get up and put away the empty mugs, set them in the sink to wash later. Procrastination is something else I'm good at, not only when it comes to my writing.

I walk back into the living room to see my daughter holding a big square box.

"What's that?"

"It's your birthday gift."

"My birthday's not for another three weeks," I tell her.

"I know. But I was thinking we could make use of it tonight." She hands me the box. "Open it."

I take it from her and set it down on the couch, lifting the cardboard lid off the top.

"Sorry it's not wrapped," Allegra adds.

A shiny blue sphere is what I see at first, until I lift it out of the box and recognize what it is.

"You got me a motorcycle helmet?"

"Yeah," she grins. "You said you wanted to come riding with me one of these days. You can't do that without one of those."

I hold it in my hands. Speechless. I did say that a while ago, it's true. But I was partly kidding. Only said it to get a rise out of her. As if I expected her to go riding with her Dad, especially after I spent all this time trying to talk her out of getting a bike. But she spent four years saving money from two part-time jobs, determined to earn it herself, and by the time she was eighteen it was her decision. "You really wanna go bike riding with your old man?"

She bites her lip, exactly the way her mother used to do when she had something up her sleeve. "Yeah. Let's do it."

I choke down the saliva that's building up in my mouth, with a gulp. "I, uh...okay. What am I supposed to wear?"

"Your new helmet."

"Nothing else?"

"A light jacket. It'll be windy on the freeway. I have an extra pair of gloves tucked in the bike. You can wear those too."

"Okay..." It's all I can get out. I'm both giddy excited and about-to-pee-my-pants terrified.

"I'll grab mine too," she says and is racing back up the stairs again.

I step towards the hallway mirror and try on my new helmet. Search for the straps and adjust them a couple of times, until finally it's a good a fit for my big head. Feels a bit like a superhero accessory. Maybe I could get a lightning bolt painted on it...

"You know you don't have to put that on until you're actually on the bike, right?"

"Right..." I grab a windbreaker from the closet by the door, noticing only then that my daughter's wearing her Mom's old leather jacket.

Allegra got the jacket about five years ago, when on a rainy day, she decided to rummage through some old boxes I have in storage in the basement lockers of our building. She asked me if she could keep it along with her mother's Omega watch. I understood her need to have something tangible that belonged to her mother, but I wanted to say no. Because I wasn't sure I could handle seeing her wearing something that was so intrinsically Kate Beckett to me.

But I couldn't tell my daughter that. So I said yes and banked on them not fitting her. She _was_ far too skinny for either of them back then. Kate's huge men's Omega watch was massive on her tiny wrist and the jacket hung loosely on her small frame.

But that was then. Now the black leather jacket is only slightly too big and the watch mostly stays on her bedside table. Instead, she usually wears none at all or some slender thing full of bright stones that Damian gave her last Christmas. (I notice she's not wearing it now. Probably never will again).

I didn't keep many things that belonged to Kate.

Figured I didn't need physical reminders on top of all the memories. (I guess this is where I should confess that I still see her face every time I close my eyes before I go to sleep. Still hope that one day I'll wake up and she'll be lying next to me. Sometimes I think it borders on insanity and sometimes I think it's precisely what keeps me sane). But I did hang on to a few things out of nostalgia, like the dreamy white outfit she wore at our wedding in the Hamptons, her NYPD captain's uniform, her watch, a ceramic coffee mug I bought her on a trip to Vancouver, a tape of some news footage from the day she arrested Bracken and her black leather jacket.

"You okay, Dad?" Allegra asks me, maybe because I hesitated too long. Lost in my thoughts.

"You bet," I shoot back.

We head down to the garage where her bike is parked and she gives me a few pointers after lowering the passenger foot pegs. How to sit on it, where to put my legs, how to hold on to her, what to do when we stop. It's kind of funny, that of all the crazy things I've done and in spite of all the fast cars I've owned, I've never been on a motorbike.

I'm not entirely convinced she can handle the bike _and_ my weight in the back seat and tell her as much. Her response is an eye roll. "Uncle Espo's about the same weight and he's sat back there more than once. He's still alive to talk about it too."

 _Okay then._

"I have to get on first," she tells me. "Then you climb on and you tell me when you're comfortable and ready to go."

I clumsily climb on the bike and hold on to her midsection, the way she told me to. "Okay...good to go."

The engine roars to life and Allegra smoothly pulls out of the spot and makes her way out of the garage.

A massive grin is plastered on my face. This is seriously cool. Way cooler even than watching a horde of murderous dogs at the Ziegfeld.

At first the heavy New York City traffic doesn't allow her to go very fast.

In those stop and go moments, I indulge myself for a minute and pretend it's Kate I'm holding on to as my fingers grasp her old leather jacket. I close my eyes and let them water, but I'm smiling at the same time, because I'm so ridiculously happy.

She makes her way through the Lincoln tunnel and before we know it we're on the Jersey turnpike. Allegra moves over to the left lane and picks up some serious speed.

The wind is whipping at us, occasionally cutting off my breath and slapping parts of Allegra's pony tail into my face from underneath her helmet. I watch us pass every car in sight until traffic becomes sparse and the only thing I see ahead of us is wide open road and darkening skies above us.

She pushes the bike to go faster still and I'm torn between squealing with delight and screaming like a little girl.

I do neither but the grin that's plastered on my face keeps getting bigger. My cheeks are gonna hurt after this.

 _This was the. Best. Idea. Ever._


	3. Thirty

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay in getting this last chapter up! The plan was to post one chapter a week, but then life got in the way. Big thanks for your favourites and follows and your feedback and generally awesome welcome into this fandom. In exchange, I'll try and write something else where I don't kill off Kate before the first sentence. ;)

And as always, huge thanks to my proofreaders, Annie and Kel!

* * *

 **Chapter 3**

 _Thirty_

We've been at the Old Haunt for a couple of hours now and are ready to say our good-byes.

Kevin's the one who gets up first, gives Lanie a kiss on the cheek and steps around our table to give me and Espo a slight slap on the shoulder. We're all old now (I've stopped pretending I'm not. I'm just glad my mind's still sharp, my bladder and knees are in good shape and I still have a full head of hair, even if it is white. Thanks, Dad). Neither Javi nor I bother getting up. Kevin wouldn't have it anyway.

The four of us do this once a month, meet up at the Old Haunt, that is. It's become a tradition; our 12th Precinct Family Gathering, and it's always on me because I still own the place. I owe them more than a drink and dinner once a month, but it'll have to do.

Mostly we laugh, drink and eat a lot, but lately there have been some sombre gatherings too. Kevin's youngest daughter was sentenced to ten years in jail last year and he hasn't been the same since.

Shannon Ryan was loved to pieces like her older siblings, but she was always different from the other Ryan kids. She dropped out of school at sixteen, no matter how much tutoring Ryan arranged for her or how much time Jenny spent trying to get her butt back into class. She moved into her troubled boyfriend's place at eighteen and started selling drugs when she was nineteen. She was charged twice and got minor sentences, slaps on the wrist really, thanks to Alexis and some of her lawyer friends. But when she was caught dealing to a minor along with her priors, there wasn't much even Alexis could do for her.

Worst of all, Kevin blames himself, no matter what we do or say, and no matter how much we all pulled together to try and help his daughter. Doesn't matter that he knows his marriage will crumble if he keeps this up.

If I've learned anything from working with them, it's that cops like Ryan, Espo and Beckett are a proud bunch and they carry the weight of the world their shoulders.

"I better get back to my honey too," Lanie announces, pushing her chair back and getting up with a sigh. This time I get up too, because, well...because it's Lanie and I might be old but I haven't forgotten all my manners.

I lean in to kiss her cheek. "See you next month."

"Of course. Wouldn't miss it," she replies.

Lanie recently celebrated her twentieth wedding anniversary. She's married to a big bear of a man that she wed in a lavish ceremony on Long Island. We were all there, including my two daughters. He's a popular chef and she met him while eating at his Manhattan restaurant on a girl's night out. I don't know Malcolm that well, but judging from how happy Lanie is, his biggest flaw is his irresistible cooking. (She complains that it's a full-on assault on her waistline). They never had kids and Lanie has no regrets. They're both retired now and spend a lot of time enjoying life on golf courses and taking salsa lessons.

She walks out together with Kevin.

"Alright, bro," Javier Esposito gets up as well. "Let's call it a night. Wanna lift back to your place?"

"No thanks," I decline his offer. "I'm going to stop by Allegra's practice. Convince her to head out with me."

"It's nine o'clock," Espo points out. "My niña's still there?"

"Of course she is."

"I'll drop you off there."

"It's the opposite direction from where you're going."

"Stop arguing with me, Castle."

I smile. He still calls me that. Even long after I've stopped working with them at the precinct. "Fine then."

We walk to his car, our pace much slower than it was twenty years ago. Unlike the rest of us, Esposito never married. He's dated a bunch of women since he's been with Lanie, one of whom stayed with him for nearly five years. But for some reason, he could never bring himself to give any of them a ring. Whether it was because he didn't love them enough or because the idea of forever still terrifies him, I'm not sure. We never talk about it because he's not one for deep conversation.

He's been a foster dad to half a dozen troubled teenagers and he's still in touch with all of them. For all his macho posturing, Espo's got a huge heart, and just the right amount of tough love that all those boys needed.

He would have been a great dad and sometimes I wish he would have had kids of his own, but he's made me realize that biology is only one part of being a father. He's played a huge part in the lives of his foster kids, in Allegra's life and in the lives of Ryan's kids. In my book he is a dad.

I never remarried either.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a saint, or a monk. I've dated a handful of wonderful women in the last twenty years and I'm grateful to them for letting me into their lives and helping me feel alive again. But I always knew that a fourth marriage wasn't in the cards. It took me three tries to get it right and three is plenty for one lifetime.

I still wear my wedding band and have no plans to ever take it off.

"Here we are," Espo announces after our ride, bringing his car to a stop next to the converted warehouse building that houses my daughter's law office.

"Thanks for the lift."

"Give my girl a hug for me, 'kay?"

"Why don't you come up and do it yourself?" I suggest. "She loves seeing you."

"What? And get my car stolen in this neighbourhood?" Javier smiles, letting me know he's kidding. "It's bad enough her old man keeps dropping in on her unannounced. One of these days you're gonna catch her doing..."

"Stop it," I raise my hand. I don't need this image in my head. "I'll give her your damn hug."

"Night, bro," he says with a smirk. Some things never change.

I make my way into the building using an access key that Allegra gave me some time ago. The elevator that I have to take to the fifth floor is one of those old ones, with a grated iron door that you need to open and shut yourself.

It's late and save for myself, I don't see anyone else in the building. I can hear every single one of my footsteps echoing into the empty hallway. It's creepy enough to be a perfect setting for a gruesome killing.

Sometimes I wish my mind didn't go there. Especially not when visiting my daughter's workplace. But it does. Writer's curse.

Both my girls turned out to be lawyers. But their jobs couldn't be more different.

Alexis is back in New York City after spending nearly two decades abroad. Her field is international law and she works inside a gorgeous art deco office at the UN building, surrounded by dignitaries from all over the world. Allegra is a defense lawyer, who's moved on from representing all sorts of criminals as their appointed counsel to now running her own small claims and personal injury firm in Brooklyn. It was an ambitious decision for a young lawyer but that didn't stop her. She shares a small office with her partner and still mostly represents those who can't afford an attorney. Except now very few of them are hardcore criminals and I'm happy about that.

Unlike Alexis, Allegra never really left New York City. Aside from a mandatory backpacking-through-Europe-trip after college and a three-month stint in Bolivia, where she helped build a school in the Andes, she's had no desire to be anywhere but here. Like her parents, this city's ingrained in her, and she'd rather find her professional footing in a former warehouse in Brooklyn than a sterile new office in the suburbs of Atlanta or Las Vegas.

Most of her cases are pro-bono. Thankfully, she's good at what she does or else she'd still be living at the loft. (Although, I'd be lying if I said I would mind. I miss having her around since she moved out.)

The elevator comes to a jarring halt on the fifth floor and I pull open the door and proceed down the hallway.

It occurs to me then that she might not be here anymore. I really should've called.

But then, she always works late. And I like to surprise her. If she's not here I'll head back downstairs and call a cab. No big deal. It might not be the best neighbourhood in the world but it's not the ghetto either.

It's when I get closer to the sign that says _'Castle & Dennison: Attorneys at Law'_

that I suddenly hear a deafening crash behind the closed door.

Terrified, I barge through the door.

 _"Allegra?"_

My daughter's angry face turns towards me. " _Dad_? What are you doing here?"

"Are you okay?" I ask. "What was that noise?"

I follow her gaze and spot the glass shards and mangled flowers lying in a pool of water at the other side of the room. Given that there's no one else here, I think it's safe to assume my daughter is the one who threw the vase and all its contents against the wall.

"That must have been a really offensive arrangement."

Allegra lowers her tensed up shoulders and runs a hand through her thick, long hair. Normally that would have elicited a smile. But not this time.

I don't hide my concern when I look at her. There's anger and frustration written on her face, but other emotions too, ones I can't quite make out. Because I can't read her as well as I could when she was ten.

"What's wrong, sweetheart?"

" _Dad_..." she sighs again. It's her way of saying _'not now_ '. Maybe not at all.

Allegra's become more closed off as she's gotten older. Sometimes I think it's because she wants to protect me, doesn't want me to share the burden of her problems. Other times I think it's just her nature.

"You can't throw a vase against a wall and expect me not to ask you what prompted it," I point out.

"I wasn't expecting you here."

Valid point.

I pull out a chair from her partner's desk (her law firm partner, the Dennison part of the sign, is an older black woman from Louisiana, with the deepest laugh I've ever heard) and sit down without a word, while Allegra leans on her desk. Neither of us say anything for a few long moments, until she steps over to her coffee machine and offers me some coffee.

It's too late for coffee but I accept it anyway.

"It's Roberto," she says softly, going back to pour herself a cup too. "He's been missing for two days."

I see the fear in her eyes now, fear that she masked with anger only minutes ago. I always have a hard time knowing when she's afraid because she hides it so well. (It's eerie sometimes, how much she's like her mother). But I see it now.

Allegra and Roberto have been together for nearly five years. They met and fell in love when she represented his mother for a minor charge. It was one of her early cases.

As her father I often wish she'd fallen in love with someone less...complicated than Roberto Alvarez. He's a good man with a huge heart and he's deeply in love with my daughter. Best of all he makes her laugh and I think she needs that. But he's got so much baggage it scares me sometimes. A troubled family that he's always bailing out. A crazy ex-girlfriend that keeps trying to destroy his happiness with my daughter. Did I mention he's also a marine who's already done three tours in the Middle East? He's often away for months at a time.

As much as she tries to hold it together, I've seen the toll it's taken on Allegra and it's hard to watch. When he was called back again only recently, I couldn't believe it.

Roberto promised Allegra that this was his last tour. That after this he'll get an honourable discharge. _If_ he comes back alive, that is.

I force the thought from my mind. Don't even want to think about what it'll do to my daughter.

"What do you mean he's missing?" I ask, not entirely sure I want to hear the answer.

"He went out on a routine overnight patrol with three others. They ran into some insurgents and had to go off the grid. No one's heard from them since." Her voice is a whisper.

"I see. What does...what _could_ that mean?'

"That they've been captured. Or killed."

"Or maybe they're hiding and lost communication?"

"It's...possible," she says, not believing it for a second. Agreeing only to assuage my own fears.

There's a sadness and a weariness in her eyes that reminds me so much of the haunted looks I'd sometimes catch on Kate's face in our early days, when we were investigating her mother's death. The dark places she'd recede into which I couldn't always pull her out of.

"Look, Dad...about the vase. I'm sorry I scared you."

"Hey..." I put a hand on her shoulder and take an even better look at her. See the circles under her eyes and how exhausted she is. "You don't have to explain...or apologize." I want to tell her she also doesn't have to be so strong. All the time.

"He asked me to marry him before he left."

" _What_?" I'm shocked. Why wouldn't she tell me something so big? "Why...?"

"I didn't tell you because I didn't say yes."

"You didn't? Why?"

"Well, according to him it's 'cause I was speechless but I'm pretty sure I said no." After a moment of levity she's serious again. "I love him," she tells me. "I do wantto be his wife."

"But?"

"Not like this. I don't want to wear a ring on my finger just so I can be the one to get an American flag handed to me when he comes back in a casket."

"Allegra... _come on._ " Here I was thinking morbid thoughts are a writer's curse. Apparently it's a family trait.

"I told him to ask me again when he gets back." Her eyes water. "That if he wants to talk about even the possibility of us having a family...then I need him around. In one piece."

To hear her talk about marriage and family as though it's some pipe dream rather than a possibility, breaks my heart a little. Alexis was already married, to Xavier, my gentle son-in-law, a French researcher she met in Geneva, before she turned thirty. She had her first child less than a year later. Her second, a bubbly teenager now, two years later.

Both my daughters worked hard for what they earned, but at the end of the day things always seemed to come more easily for Alexis than Allegra. Whether it was it was grades or men or court cases, I always got the sense that my younger daughter had to work twice as hard for what she got.

Sometimes, I think the universe keeps throwing obstacles at her because it knows Allegra can handle them. But seriously, enough already. I want it to stop. My baby's only human.

"I was so angry after I got that phone call," Allegra admits. "That after all we've gone through...that it might end like this. It's so damn unfair."

"Hang on a second. Since when do you lose hope so quickly?"

Allegra sets down her coffee mug and gives me a questioning look. "How is it that you _never_ lose it?"

"What?"

"For as long as I've known you, I've never seen you get frustrated like I do. God knows you would have had ample reason. Life hasn't exactly been kind to you."

"Well..." I shrug my shoulders. "To be honest. I have a lousy throw. The vase probably wouldn't have made it all the way to the wall if I'd thrown it."

She doesn't let me off that easily.

"Dad...your first wife left you to raise Alexis alone, you lost your mother the day I was born, and then Mom was killed when I was only two years old, leaving you to raise another kid by yourself."

I raise my brows and calmly take another sip of coffee. "That is miserable. Didn't even realize it until you spelled it out like that."

Allegra's eyes darken in shock and instant remorse as she covers her mouth with one hand. "Oh god, I'm sorry. I didn't mean..." She groans. "What a stupid thing to say."

"For what it's worth, no one forced me to raise you alone. I had the option of putting you up for adoption. Lord knows Espo or Lanie would've taken you in a heartbeat."

"I'm such a thoughtless idiot."

"Hey...it's okay." I chuckle and squeeze her shoulder. More amused than anything else. She can be so serious sometimes. So hard on herself. "You're upset."

"Not an excuse."

I ponder her words and they suddenly weigh me down. Is that what I've led her to believe her whole life? That I was never angry? Never lost it? Never said anything stupid?

Is that why she thinks she needs to be so strong all the time? Because she thinks I was?

"Allegra, it's not true," I tell her.

"What's not true?"

"That I never lost it."

"It's just that...I've never seen you. My whole life."

Because after the funeral I promised myself I wouldn't let her. Told myself I would never go down that rabbit hole again. Although there _have_ been times when I did. Occasional lapses, when I sent her off to summer camp and was home alone. When I played all of Kate's favourite songs on the stereo, wallowed in memories, drank so much I couldn't see straight and didn't leave the loft for days. By the time I went to pick her up again, it was over. I flushed the despair from my system and was sober and happy again. Not because I had to be, but because I wanted that for both of us.

"I lost it big time right after your Mom died in my arms."

Allegra looks at me strangely. "What do you mean, died in your arms? She died in ambulance, on the way to the hospital..."

"That's what the news reports said."

"It's not...?"

"She was gone before they put her in the ambulance."

I've never told her my daughter this. The only who knows everything is Esposito. He was there in the minutes after it happened. Apparently he saw some stranger try to film it on his smartphone, ripped the phone from the guy's hand and threw it down a sewer grate. Threatened to shoot him if he so much as tried to retrieve it.

I don't condone the abuse of power by the police, but I'll be forever grateful for what Espo did that day. For giving me and my wife one last moment alone together. One that wouldn't be plastered all over the media before the end of the night.

It happened so long ago, 28 years now, but every minute of that day is still fresh in my memory. Because I've relived it a hundred times.

"Will you tell me what really happened?" Allegra asks.

I can. But I'm not sure I want to. There are so many little details I've never shared with anyone. Never cared to.

"Please?"

It's not often Allegra asks me for something these days. When she does, I feel like I should try and give it to her.

So I agree and tell her to sit down, I grab a chair of my own and sit down next to her and start telling her everything. From the beginning.

I start with the call I got from Kate just as I left my meeting at Black Pawn publishing. It was a gorgeous summer day, all vibrant blue skies and bright sunshine. Sunglasses on, I was walking down 43rd Street towards Hell's Kitchen. There was a new pastry shop there I wanted to try out.

 _"Hey, babe, is your meeting over?"_

 _"Just got out."_

 _"Feel like checking out a crime scene? For old time's sake?"_

 _"What do you mean?"_ That's what I asked. _Hell yes,_ is what I was thinking.

 _"Espo and Ryan have got a really weird one. Satanic symbols and voodoo rituals next to a body under a highway overpass. They called me about it today and were saying it made them think about you. That they could use an out-of-the-box theory."_

 _"Out-of-the-box is my middle name."_

 _"You wanna go?"_

 _"Yes!"_

I missed it, to be honest. Missed working with Beckett and the boys. Missed the adrenaline rush we'd get when we cracked a lead wide open and solved a difficult case. Sometimes I still get a call from the boys when they want to bounce ideas off me. But it's not the same without Beckett bossing us around and reining us in.

I stopped shadowing her after she made Captain and aside from our off-duty get-togethers with Lanie and the boys, she didn't see Espo and Ryan that often anymore either. Her new precinct was halfway across town from theirs and she had more than enough work on her own plate without having time to poke her nose into anyone else's cases.

 _"Where are you?"_

 _"Near 43rd and 10th."_

 _"I'll come get you."_

 _"Police escort. Nice. Can we turn on the siren for old times sake too?"_

 _"Don't make me regret this."_

 _"Love you too."_ I was grinning. I missed this. Rita Rudner was right. The best part of being married was knowing that you found that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

She was driving the captain's cruiser when she picked me up less than fifteen minutes later. The AC was turned off in the car and the windows rolled down, her shoulder length hair windblown, a smile on her face when I stepped into the car, because she saw the coffee and the cinnamon bun I was holding in my hands.

"You know me so well," she gushed. "I skipped lunch so I could get everything done and sneak out early."

"You skipped lunch so you could leave early and take me to a crime scene? That's love."

A smirk lifted her lips, even as her eyes remained on the road. "Something like that."

"Had I known I'd have brought you a real lunch."

"No, this is perfect," she left one hand on the steering wheel and grabbed the pastry with the other, taking a big bite of it. "I've been dreaming about a good cup of coffee all day."

Sitting in traffic we chatted about work. Things were good at her precinct these days. She'd made massive inroads in weeding out the bad apples, their case closure rates were climbing steadily and she now held the grudging respect of even those officers who used to enjoy throwing her under the bus every chance they got. Her success took some NYPD higher-ups by surprise, but not me. I knew how good she was.

After she finished scarfing down the cinnamon roll, Kate put a free hand on my leg, our eyes meeting in the rear-view mirror. Her long fingers inched towards the inside of my thigh.

"My Dad offered to keep Allegra for the night."

"Oh...he did?"

The second she said it my mind was already on the endless possibilities that this implied.

It had been some time since we had a night to ourselves at the loft.

"He'd be insulted if we didn't take him up on it, don't you think?"

"Think you might be right."

Part of me wanted to insist we head straight home. I didn't really care about the case anymore, no matter how bizarre it was. My mind was on strip poker, wine, strawberries and making love in the living room.

But I didn't say anything (and would torment myself for weeks afterwards, wondering whether I might have saved her life if I had). Kate stopped the car when we got close to the crime scene. It happened yesterday, so the body was long gone, already at the coroner's. She parked on the street. We'd have to walk along a sidewalk and then veer off it to the highway underpass on foot.

That's where we spotted Esposito in the distance and I heard him calling out, "Yo Captain...Castle!" He gave us a small wave of acknowledgement before kneeling down and writing something in his notebook. Ryan wasn't there that day. He was off following another lead related to the case.

I forgot my sunglasses in the car, so my eyes adjusted to the bright sunlight and then trailed my wife as she stepped out of the car. Kate looked great that day, regal almost, in her cream-coloured tailored suit and heels. Her attire was more formal than it used to be in her detective days.

I noticed a passerby on the sidewalk checking her out so I hurried to catch up to my wife's quick pace, in order to take my place by her side and mark my territory.

 _You can look, but she's mine._

When I was close enough to her that our shoulders nearly touched, she turned her head for a second and leaned into towards my ear.

"I brought handcuffs," she whispered.

"For what?'"

"For tonight."

She bit her lip, smiling and taunting me, and every fibre of my body really, _really_ wanted to leave that crime scene right then and there. (I don't tell Allegra this part)

Kate saw my reaction and her hand reached for mine and suddenly our fingers were entwined. Her soft skin cooling mine off. We held hands for a few steps until we approached the crime scene and she let go.

We'd been married some time then, and there were many routine, uneventful, even frustrating days, but there were also moments like this; perfect summer afternoons in the best city in the world, when my gorgeous wife drove me wild, turned the heads of strangers and didn't notice because I was the one she was still madly in love with.

Another pedestrian came towards us, wearing jeans and a sweater and holding a paper bag in his hand. He raised it towards his mouth, so we figured it was stuffed with something edible. We barely gave him a second glance.

Except it wasn't food inside his bag.

The instant we realized how wrong we were, he'd already yanked the handgun out of the paper bag and pulled the trigger once.

It all happened _so_ fast.

Kate gasping and doubling over with the impact of the first bullet. Me, breaking her fall, just as the second bullet hit her. Esposito screaming and running with lightning speed towards the guy who shot her, tackling him to the ground.

Kate was on the pavement, struggling to breathe and I was cradling her in my lap. The first bullet hit her in the chest, not far from her sniper's scar and it paralyzed me with sheer terror. Subconsciously I already knew that there was no way her heart could survive that twice.

Miracles only happen once.

"Kate..." I pressed my palm against her stomach, where the second bullet hit her, in a futile effort to try and stop the flow of blood. Her cream-coloured suit was fast turning crimson red.

She was losing blood so quickly and all I could do was watch, helpless and useless.

I heard Espo calling for help for help on his phone. Heard him calling my name after he cuffed the shooter. Asking me if I was okay. Then I heard him yell at a bystander (the guy who was filming us on his cell phone).

Kate groaned and her eyes were clouded with pain but she grabbed my shirt.

"Kate...hold on. Espo called for help...they're gonna be here any moment..."

I started to hyperventilate and I think that's why she grabbed my shirt with the last of her strength.

 _Castle, focus!_

I could hear her saying it, even though she didn't. It was my imagination.

"Rick...stop..."

"Kate...please!"

She fisted the fabric of my shirt in her hand and whimpered with the effort. My hands were wrapped around hers and I wanted to take her and scoop her up in my arms. Protect her from this godawful world and keep her warm and safe and never let go.

Her skin already felt cool against mine, in spite of the heat outside.

"Rick..." It took so much effort for her to speak but her eyes were on mine and they demanded my attention. "Rick...it's okay. Babe, it's okay. You're here. I'm not alone. Rick.." She struggled to say the words and I wanted to tell her to stop. To conserve every damn drop of energy she had because she could not leave me.

"Want you to know... that you're...you're the _best_ thing that ever happened to me. You make me so happy."

It's the last thing she said before she lost consciousness. The pain and tension on her face disappeared the moment her eyes closed and she suddenly looked calm. As though she'd fallen asleep on me. (Like she sometimes did when I made her watch my favourite sci-fi show).

 _No, no, no, no, no...don't you dare say goodbye. Not happening. Not allowed. No way, Kate. Nope._

I couldn't stop my tears when she closed her eyes. I was shaking and hysterical.

My wife was dying in my arms and I was a useless, slobbering mess. Struck by two bullets, she was the one who found the strength to say goodbye. Not me. I couldn't get a single word out. Richard Castle, best-selling author, couldn't even croak out an "I love you". Not this time.

"Dad..." Allegra's hand is on my arm and suddenly I'm back in the present. In her law office in Brooklyn. " _She knew_. You _know_ that she knew!"

I nod. Didn't notice until now that my cheeks are wet. (I'm not stoic like Kevin and Javi. Or as strong as Allegra seems to think. Crying comes embarrassingly easy for me). Of course Beckett knew. But there's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I said it out loud. I wish that would've been the last thing she heard. Not the sound of sirens approaching but my voice telling her how much I loved her.

But I couldn't bring myself to do it this time, because that would've been a goodbye and I was so not ready to say goodbye.

"They tried to revive her in the ambulance, but she never regained consciousness again, " I tell Allegra. "She was pronounced dead when she arrived at the hospital."

My clothes were covered in her blood when the doctor at the hospital came out to tell me what I already knew. Hearing it out loud was the final straw.

 _"I'm so sorry, Mr. Castle. The paramedics did everything they could."_

 _We did everything we could_. Is there a sadder sentence in the English language? I don't think so.

My knees gave out and I collapsed into one of those cheap chairs they have in the waiting areas outside of emergency rooms all over the world.

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Didn't want to exist in a world without her.

I remember Kevin Ryan stepping into the room, kneeling down next to me and I didn't even question how he got there so fast as he handed me a glass of water and told me I needed to get changed. He literally took me by the hand and helped me get up and get out of my clothes in the men's room because I couldn't function.

I wanted to die.

I vaguely recall seeing Javier Esposito, along with half a dozen uniforms at the ER and he was just as much of a mess as I was. Between him and Ryan, it was always Javi who was closest to Beckett. She was like a sister to him and losing her wasn't something he could deal with either.

Ryan made me splash some water on my face and then drink some more of it.

"There's gonna be reporters here any minute and cops that wanna talk to you," he told me and when I saw his face in the bathroom mirror, I saw that he was near tears too. Of course he found a way to hold them back, unlike myself. "You already gave your statement to us, okay? Javi's gonna get you out of here before they arrive and swarm you."

"What?" I couldn't think straight. "No...no, no! I'm not leaving her."

"Castle," Ryan's voice was hollow but firm. "You should go see her dad. Before he hears it on the news."

The two of them flanked me on the way out of the hospital and I'm not sure how I made it into a taxi and over to Jim Beckett's place. At one point the driver had to stop so I could open the door and throw up.

 _I_ couldn't deal with this, never mind be strong for someone else.

But somehow I found a way to clean up, steady my voice and stop my hands from shaking by the time I knocked on his door.

"He was holding you in his arms when I got there," I tell Allegra. "You were asleep and drooling on his shoulder."

I'll never forget Jim Beckett's face that day.

"Rick, what are you doing here?" he asked. Terrified at the thought of what my presence might imply. "There's breaking news on TV of a high ranking NYPD officer killed in the line of duty. But they're not giving any details. Rick, tell me you're not here because of that...tell me it's not Katie..."

I didn't even have to say anything. He knew with one look at my face.

"I remember taking you from his arms and watching him sit down and start sobbing. You stirred in your sleep, but didn't wake up."

Jim Beckett started drinking again a few weeks after that night. He died of heart failure eight months later.

Sometimes it makes me angry that he gave up after Kate died, leaving Allegra without a single grandparent (I had no idea then, or now, whether my father was dead or alive. I've never heard from him again) but I get it. I do. I survived losing Kate because I had to, for my girls, but I'm not sure I could survive losing either one of my daughters.

"I was a mess afterwards," I confess to my daughter. "I mean, hardcore. Couldn't do anything. Didn't want to do anything. Couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't take care of you. Couldn't even look at you. Alexis was the one who stepped in and did everything. She was the anchor for all of us."

I locked myself in the bedroom and listened to the endless news coverage about the shooting. Debates over this and that and Kate's face always plastered all over the background.

The gun lobbyists suggesting I should have been armed. It was such a silly argument. Beckett, who was ten times faster on the trigger than I would ever be, _was_ armed that day. There was a fully-loaded Glock 19 sitting snugly in a holster underneath her suit jacket. No additional firepower would have made us react any faster.

The anti-gun lobbyists went on about how a mentally ill man shouldn't have had access to a gun. But he wasn't diagnosed with his illness when he got it. He was ex-military and his gun was licensed and registered. It was all completely legit, so their argument was pointless too.

People questioned why she wasn't wearing a vest. As if she wore one every time she walked down the streets of New York.

Reporters wanted to know what we were doing on a case that didn't involve her precinct. Kevin and Javier were grilled endlessly over the fact that they reached to me as a consultant even though they'd done it a dozen times before. Funny, how the NYPD never minded when it was my crazy theories that cracked a case.

There were even debates on whether she was actually on duty when it happened. (I don't think she was. For once in her life she'd left the precinct early and had no intentions of going back that night) But because she was helping the boys on a case, off the record or not, they decided she was.

It made for a better story anyway.

"NYPD captain killed in the line of duty" was a _way_ better narrative than "NYPD captain randomly shot by schizophrenic on way home from work."

I guess I'd have done the same if I were writing it.

Except this time there was no story and that was something else I couldn't handle.

'What do you mean?" Allegra asks me.

"The very first case I worked with your mother, she insisted to me that sometimes there is no story. Sometimes a guy's just a psychopath. I disagreed and I was nearly always right. Except this time."

The man who shot and killed Kate wasn't one of Bracken's goons coming at us in an epic battle of good versus evil. It wasn't one of Kelly Nieman's former patients, wanting revenge because Beckett killed their favourite plastic surgeon.

He wasn't even a psychopath, just a paranoid schizophrenic who stopped taking his meds because he couldn't stand the side effects. Beckett's shooter was obsessed with the number 46. Convinced that the 46th woman he'd see that day was a demon sent to kill him. He counted them one by one after he left his apartment that afternoon.

"You mother was the forty-sixth woman he saw that day."

It was so random and nonsensical, I still can't wrap my head around it. To this day.

 _Sometimes there is no story._

Allegra doesn't say anything. She knows this part all too well. She devoured every news report about her mother's shooting since she was old enough to read. And god knows there was enough written about the guy who shot her to fill several novels.

Allegra leaves to go get me some more coffee. I don't really need any more. It'll just keep me up all night. But it's her way of saying she wants me to go on. She often used to make me coffee at the loft, when we brainstormed about my latest novels.

"What kind of stupid number is 46 anyway?" I ask my daughter. "Couldn't he have at least picked a good one? Like thirteen? Or 666? Or even...69?"

Allegra gives me a lopsided smile.

They institutionalized the guy after his trial. He got off on an insanity plea and I'm okay with that. He _was_ driven by insanity. Slapping the death penalty on him wouldn't have given me any satisfaction. I read somewhere that after they put him back on his meds and he realized what he'd done, he tried to kill himself. I know he didn't succeed and beyond that I have no idea where he is now. Whether he's back out or even still alive.

I don't care. What difference does it make? Nothing will bring her back.

The funeral was the worst part of it all.

It was _huge._

Beckett was the highest ranking officer killed in the line of duty in god knows how many years and that meant law enforcement officials from all over the continent were going to attend. Police chiefs from as far away as Canada and Mexico. Full honours with flags and endless regalia all over the place. The President was supposed to there too, if she hadn't been on a trade visit to China at the time. Instead, she sent the Vice President.

"They wanted to bury her at Arlington," I tell Allegra. "But that's where I put my foot down. We never talked about it but I know Kate would have wanted to be buried next to her mother."

Beckett always had a healthy respect for police traditions. She dutifully wore her full dress uniform whenever she had to but I think she would have hated the sheer pomp and circumstance of her own funeral as much as I did. It was overwhelming and suffocating.

Clichéd as it might sound, Beckett was never in it for the glory and she didn't care about being a hero. She did it for justice and to give the dead a voice.

"I was a mess the morning of the funeral," I told Allegra. "Hung over from too much scotch the night before, unwashed, unshaven...last thing I wanted to do was put on a black suit, sit in the sweltering New York heat and listen to bagpipes while watching your mother's casket being lowered into the ground."

Allegra's expression is sorrowful. "I'm sorry..."

"I'm telling you this because I want you to know that there were plenty of times that l lost it. Did worse things than throw a vase against a wall."

"But you went to the funeral?"

"Of course I went. I couldn't not pay my last respects to your mother." I grin a little. "And I couldn't give the media whole new fodder by not showing up."

Alexis made me get cleaned up that day. Shoved me into a cold shower fully clothed and told me I wasn't allowed to come out of the bathroom until I shaved.

"It was...the hardest thing I've ever done. Attend your mother's funeral."

"But you did it."

"At one point, as Commissioner Victoria Gates read the eulogy, everyone was quiet and sombre. I was baking in the hot sun in my black suit, thinking I was gonna pass out. The heat was crippling and I hadn't had any real food in days. Alexis was holding you in her lap, and her and Lanie were both crying. And then...this..." I grin at the memory. "This ladybug lands on your bare arm and starts crawling along it and you start giggling. Right in the middle of the most unbearable hour of my life, you start giggling. I mean...really loudly! Even Iron Gates cracked a smile. There you were squealing in delight because of this insect. So I took you from Alexis's lap and held you for the first time since I went to see your grandpa. I did it to try and get you to be quiet but it made me realize how much I missed holding you in my arms."

Allegra's eyes are watering.

"Call me crazy, but I know that was a message from your mother, telling me to man up and to stop neglecting the biggest gift she ever gave me."

 _And reminding me that even on the worst days, there is the possibility of joy._

Funny enough, that's the picture that all the newspapers carried after the funeral was over. Not the ones of hundreds of police officers swamping the small New York cemetery in a sea of black and blue, but the one of me holding my smiling daughter in my lap during the eulogy.

I liked that.

Because that's the legacy Kate would've wanted to leave. She fought so hard to knock down all her walls and to destroy the enemies that tried to prevent her happiness. In the end she succeeded and left behind a husband who was crazy about her and one seriously happy little kid. _That_ was the ultimate tribute to Kate Beckett.

And _that_ was her story. The love she left behind, not the way she died.

"Sometimes it makes me angry that your mother never got to see you grow up and that you never got a chance to get to know her," I admit. "But in many ways, I already got more than I bargained for."

"More?" Allegra questions.

"The day your mother got shot by a sniper at Montgomery's funeral, I remember going to the hospital, pacing the hallways waiting for her to pull through the surgery...and the only thing I wanted was for her to live. That's it. Kate needed to live. It's all that mattered. Everything else was gravy. If someone had said to me that night at the hospital that she's not only gonna survive this...but that we'd be lovers, get married and have a daughter. I'd have told them they were crazy. That was so far beyond what I dared hope for." I turn to my daughter and her blue eyes meet mine. "Happily-ever-after would really have been pushing it, don't you think?"

"Oh Dad..." Allegra grimaces. "That's a hell of a way of looking at it."

It's true though. We squeezed a lot of life and love into those eight years of borrowed time. More than most people do in a lifetime.

I want to tell Allegra as much but then her phone rings and I see the panic on her face.

"I don't recognize the number..." she says.

It rings. Several times. And my daughter still doesn't answer.

"Allegra...pick it up."

The colour drains from her face as she finally takes the call.

I get up and make sure she stays seated. Just in case.

"Yes...this is she."

I swallow. _Please let it be good news. Whatever else you throw at my kid, at least give her a chance to be as happy as I was. It's all I'm asking._

"Yes..."

I watch her intently. Watch the way her hands grip the phone so hard that her knuckles are white.

"He was...found? _You found them_?" It's then that her tears start to fall. But it's not sadness I see on her face, it's relief. Happy tears.

I exhale and feel my muscles relax.

"Yes!" she exclaims. "Put him on!" She smiles at me and gives me a thumbs up sign. As if I couldn't read every emotion on her face. "Oh my god, Bobby...I was so worried, are you okay?"

I listen to her talk to her boyfriend, their conversation interspersed with low-voiced sweet nothings that remind me how much she loves the guy. It's a gentle, vulnerable side of my daughter I don't often see. That too reminds me of Kate, who could be so soft and tender when she was alone with me and so very different from the unyielding cop the rest of the world got to see.

"There's something else," I hear my daughter say. "I've changed my mind. About your question...I said no, but what I really wanted to say was yes." She giggles. "Yes yes... _that_ question. Yes...I wanna marry you." "

"Congratulations!" I yell across her desk and I'm grinning now. (I said I'm old, I didn't say I was mature).

She's blushing. "My Dad's here...I think he approves."

"Tell him you're worth at least twenty goats."

Allegra rolls her eyes and then narrows them conspiratorially. "He says he's happy to host our wedding at his place in the Hamptons."

 _Smart-ass._

It's true though. I'd be totally okay with that. The house is big enough to have Allegra and Roberto, along with Alexis and her family stay over after the wedding. We could make a weekend celebration of it. And I love the idea of all of them coming together under one roof again. A wedding would be the perfect excuse.

Now that she mentioned it, I'm planning it already.

She ends the call and I can see the relief written all over her. She can't stop smiling.

"Congratulations, Mrs. Alvarez."

"Oh no..." Allegra grins. "I'm not changing my name. Way too much paperwork."

I chuckle. Guess she inherited more than my blue eyes after all.

"I was kidding by the way," she adds, getting up to lean against her desk again. "About having the wedding in the Hamptons."

"I wasn't. You are worth at least twenty goats."

I get another eye roll for that one.

"Seriously though. I think you should have the wedding at the Hamptons," I tell her. "It's a fantastic idea. "

"You really wouldn't mind? Won't it remind you of your own..."

"My own wedding?"

"Yeah."

"You know that was one of the best days of my life, right?"

Allegra scrunches her lips and I can see she really is contemplating it. "Okay...I'll run it by Roberto."

"I'll talk him into it."

"Leave that to me," my daughter orders, just before stifling a yawn. Now that all her pent up tension is gone, she looks like she's ready to give in to her exhaustion. "Did you drive here?" she asks me.

"Taxi." I never drive to and from our Old Haunt gatherings just in case we drink more than we plan to.

"I'll drive."

"No. I'll take a cab." Allegra's apartment is in Queens and that means she'd have to head back in and out of Manhattan.

She turns towards me. The happiness is still radiating from her face, but she's serious again. "I was thinking of telling Mom the big news. Wanna join me?"

"What?" I don't understand. "The cemetery...it's closed at this time."

"I know a way in."

"You do?"

"I do," Allegra says mischievously. She might be all grown up now, in her law office and heels and suits, but my little one is still crazy and reckless. I forget that sometimes.

I don't even know what to say.

"I sometimes snuck in after-hours when I was younger," she confesses. "When I needed to spend some time with her. I went to see her whenever something big happened in my life." She grins. "Like the one and only time I got a better grade than Alexis on a law exam."

"I don't know what to say..." I admit. There's a lump in my throat at the thought of my teenage daughter spending time with the mother she never really knew.

"I wanted her to still be a part of my life," Allegra explains. "That's all."

I swallow. Blown away by her admission. "I didn't know."

"I didn't tell you because I didn't ever want you to think that you weren't enough for me. Or that you'd feel bad because I needed to be near her sometimes. You're the best Dad I could've ever asked for, you know that, right? I never lacked for anything."

I nod a little, not trusting my voice. If she keeps this up she's going to make cry again.

Allegra walks over to where the mangled flowers and glass shards are lying on the floor. I move to help her but she won't let me.

"My mess," she insists.

So I sit and watch as she grabs a dust pan, squats down and wipes up the broken bits of glass off the hardwood floor. Then she scoops up the flowers and finds a piece of ribbon in one of the filing cabinets and ties them together.

"Bring them," I suggest.

"What?" Allegra looks at me sceptically.

"We'll leave them for your mother, after we tell her what you did to them. She'll get a kick out of that."

She will too. It's a good story. I'll probably go back alone sometime soon and tell her the rest. I'll tell her that our daughter's become an extraordinary woman and that she'd be so damn proud. That I'll try not bawl my eyes out when I give her away at her wedding.

Allegra chuckles, hooking her arm into mine as we leave her office together. She turns off the light behind us and the deserted hallway looks fabulously creepy again. Even more so when the wooden floors start to creak with our footsteps.

"You sure?"

"Oh, yes. She's gonna love it. All of it. Your news and the battered flowers. Mostly she's gonna love seeing me."

"Whatever, Dad," Allegra mumbles before yanking open the elevator door, cursing when it doesn't budge at first and then giving me a gentle push inside when it does.

That's my girl.


	4. Two (Deleted scene)

**A/N** : I had no plans to add to this story but a reader suggested to me that it would be nice to add a scene where we actually see Kate with her daughter. Two days ago, out of nowhere, this idea popped into my head. So I put it on paper and decided to add it as a deleted scene of sorts. For anyone else who might enjoy it.

No proof readers this time, so all mistakes are mine. **  
**

_**Two (Deleted Scene)**_

Sunday is my day to write.

I mean, technically I can write every day. Since Allegra was born I've mostly been a stay-at-home Dad. So on paper it might look like I have lots of time to write. But anyone who's ever looked after a little human knows that the only free time you really have is when they're napping. And frankly, in those moments I'm usually ready for a nap too. The last thing I want to do sit down at my desk and work on my novel.

When Allegra naps the things I do think about doing include taking a shower, grabbing some food and picking toys up off the floor to increase my chances of having one toy-injury free day. (It hasn't happened yet, but I'm an optimist. I'm convinced the day will come when I don't trip over a plastic noisemaker from China in my own living room.).

Anyway, back to Sundays.

Beckett basically takes Allegra off my hands on Sundays. Sometimes for the whole day (on those rare days when I'm feeling particularly inspired) but definitely for the morning and usually for part of the afternoon as well. Barring any major catastrophe, Sunday is the one day she won't go in to the precinct. Beckett spends too much time there as it is. Twelve, fourteen hour days are the norm for her during the week and it's not unusual for her to go in on Saturdays too, in order to catch up on all the paperwork she never gets around to doing between her countless meetings and dealing with whatever chaos lands on her desk. Sometimes I think she misses being out in the field, but I have to admit, it gives me a certain peace of mind to know she spends the bulk of her time inside the precinct. That she's not chasing armed criminal in dark alleys anymore (I was decidedly more okay with it back when I was shadowing her, knowing I had her back out there, as macho and presumptuous that might sound).

Kate feels guilty sometimes, for not being around her daughter as much as she wants to be so she loves her Sunday mornings with Allegra. Almost as much as I love the break from having a crying, babbling, giggling toddler around me.

Kate does all sorts of things with her. She'll go for long walks in Central Park, stopping at the zoo afterwards, because Allegra loves the animals. Sometimes she'll take her to the local YMCA and they'll go to the pool. She brought her to Mom & Baby Yoga for a while too, until Allegra crawled out of the room they were in and straight into an adjacent room where she climbed over a woman's head. Apparently the woman was in some sort of deep meditation and Allegra almost gave her heart attack (I don't think Beckett ever went back to that yoga studio again). Sometimes her and Lanie take her out to brunch too, taking turns bouncing our troublemaker on their laps so she doesn't wreak havoc in whatever fancy restaurant Lanie's picked.

This morning Kate took her to a local playground. She'll probably pop into a cafe for a latte afterwards and come back home in the early afternoon, bringing back some lunch so we don't have to cook. (I love our lazy Sundays. It's my favourite day of the week.)

I haven't started writing yet today.

For the time being I'm enjoying doing absolutely nothing. Drinking a coffee by the pantry and marvelling at how perfectly the sunlight is pouring through the closed blinds in the kitchen. I know this is unusual for a writer, but I'm not someone who loves solitude. I do my best writing when there's life around me. While I appreciate not having a toddler tugging at my pants, I kind of wish someone else was in the loft, because I feed off the energy of others.

Much as she used to drive me crazy, I miss having my mother around. Every single day. What I wouldn't give to have her back just for a few hours.

I think of her as I make my way into the study with my mug of coffee. I used to not bother getting changed out of my pyjamas on Sundays, but when I did that I had the tendency to sink into the couch and play video games all morning. I didn't get a lot of writing done that way.

So nowadays I make sure to shower and get dressed. Makes it feel more like going to work. Even if my work is only a few steps from the kitchen.

Once I've turned on my desktop computer it doesn't take long for me to lose myself in my current Nikki Heat novel. Nikki and Jameson are tracking down that rarest of beasts, a female serial killer (They don't know it's the librarian yet, but the readers soon will).

The coffee turns cold in my mug and an hour passes by without me noticing. This is the best part of writing, when it flows so freely and naturally that you lose all sense of the outside world. A kink in my neck brings me back to it and I stretch my arms. I see that I haven't touched my coffee.

I'm about to get up and pour myself a fresh cup when I hear screaming from the hallway followed by the sound of a door opening.

"Castle!" I hear Kate's voice as soon as the door opens. "I need some help."

Her words are nearly drowned out by our daughter's screaming.

Being around Allegra all the time means I know her cries all too well. Know the difference between her being hungry, hurt, tired or merely wanting attention.

Now she's hurt. (Mind you, you don't need to decipher her cries to figure this one out. Her bloody cheek is kind of a give-away).

Kate's holding Allegra with one arm while angrily shoving the stroller into the loft with the other.

"What happened?" I ask.

I hold out my arms to take our daughter from her, but Kate doesn't let go of Allegra. "Get the first aid kit."

I do as she tells me and when I get back into the living room, Kate's sitting on the couch with Allegra on her lap, trying in vain to get her to stop crying. Big, wet tears are pouring out of her blue eyes and dripping all over her face, including her bloody cheek.

I kneel down in front of both of them with the first aid kit, noticing now that my daughter's hands and knees are scraped too. Her cheek looks the worst, so I start on that first. Cleaning it with an antiseptic wipe and putting generous dabs of ointment on it. Of course that only makes her scream louder. Her piercing wails are the only audible sound in the loft now and she tries hard to squirm out of her mother's grasp. Every now and then her hands whack my face, even though Kate tries to get a hold of them. Tries to keep her little fingers away from her bleeding face.

Allegra might still be small but she's feisty. Holding on to her is no easy feat.

We might all be injured by the time we're done patching her up.

I somehow manage to finish fixing up her cheek, padding down a big square band-aid even as she keeps crying. I catch a glimpse at my wife, who looks as distraught as my daughter (minus the screaming and crying).

"Castle..."

"Yeah?"

I'm gonna tackle her knee next. Allegra's doing too much squirming for me to even attempt cleaning her elbow.

"Do you think we should take her to a hospital?"

"Hospital?" I question.

None of her cuts and scrapes look very deep to me. But Kate tends to panic when it comes to Allegra. She wouldn't think to see a doctor herself if some criminal knocks her out during a fist fight, but if Allegra has a fever for more than a couple of hours, she's ready to run straight to the ER.

In fairness, I was a panicky parent the first time around too. I'm a bit more relaxed with my second one. Besides, Allegra is way more of a handful than Alexis ever was. She gets into bumps and scrapes nearly every day since she started walking. If I took all of them seriously, I'd have to write an extra book a year just to pay for our medical bills.

"Why? What happened?"

"She...she fell off a slide. I wasn't looking...one moment she's playing in the sand near the slide, the next she's waving to me, standing halfway up the slide...I tried...I tried to get to her but this other, bigger kid came bolting down the slide and knocked her right off."

I have a hard time understanding (and hearing) Kate's explanation through Allegra's screaming.

"She was pretty high up when she fell...maybe she's more hurt than we think."

"Hey..." I ignore Kate for a moment and focus on my daughter. It's so hard to try and bandage her up when she's out of control like this. Nothing that Kate does seems to calm her down. "Come on, Potato, enough is enough."

I have this one trick that always calms her down. I raise my hand, spread out my fingers and cover Allegra's face with it. She doesn't respond at first and keeps crying. So I remove my hand and give her nose a poke with my index finger, watch as her blue eyes follow it. They look focused enough that I don't think she's really hurt her head. Then I put my hand back over her face, so that I can only see her eyes peeking through the spaces between my fingers. It muffles her cries at first and that seems to calm her down.

I repeat the whole process three times.

By the third time, she's no longer crying. Just sniffling. Pitiful little sounds, interspersed with the occasional hiccup. I lean in, squish my nose against hers and Allegra rewards me with what almost looks like a smile.

I know I'm terribly biased, but she's so freaking cute when she smiles. She might have my eyes and Kate's face (It's too early to tell, but I think she'll also have Kate's hair when she gets older) but her smile is all her own. And it's beautiful.

Kate kisses the top of Allegra's head, relieved that our girl has finally stopped fighting us. "You're amazing," she tells me.

"We can't all be baby whisperers," I say with a satisfied grin and start working on patching up Allegra's knee.

"That trick never works when I do it," Kate says ruefully. "She's such a Daddy's girl."

I don't think it's so much that she's Daddy's girl. My fat, warm fingers are just more comforting than Kate's cool, skinny ones.

When I'm finally done, Kate lets Allegra go and our daughter waddles across the living room, towards her favourite toy. She ignores both of us now that we've put her back together.

"Look, she didn't topple over," I point out to my wife. "I think she'll be okay."

"It's my fault." Kate leans back into the couch and runs both her hands through her hair. I notice they're shaking a little. "It shouldn't have happened."

"What?" I get off my knees and scoot up into the couch next to her.

"I should've been paying attention to her. Instead, I was checking work e-mails on my phone."

I get it now. The guilt-laden looks I caught on her face since she walked through the door with our screaming daughter. "I'm sure you were the only parent in the playground who had her phone out," I joke.

Kate looks at me in disbelief. As if she'd consider the idea of me giving her an excuse.

"I swore to myself that one morning a week I wouldn't think about work. And I can't do it...I see these flagged e-mails from the Commissioner and of course I can't ignore them. Even though I know that letting Allegra out of my sight for ten seconds is asking for trouble."

"What'd the Commish want?"

"Petrelli got caught on video using excessive force this morning. Again." She sighs. "You know I'm not a saint, I've been guilty of it myself...but this guy, he's a menace and a loose cannon. Worse than Slaughter. He tackled a 14-year old kid walking down the street eating an ice-cream. Fourteen! I swear I'm getting that guy off the force, if it's the last thing I do as Captain. I have a good team at my precinct but it's the guys like him that get the attention and make us all look bad."

Getting a police officer fired is a lot harder than the media might lead you to believe. There's an awful lot of due process involved. Beckett's well aware of that and for someone who doesn't particularly enjoy bureaucracy, it drives her crazy sometimes.

Like right now.

"Still..." Her hazel eyes turn to mine, full of regret. "It shouldn't have mattered this morning. I should have known better than to check my phone when she's at the playground. I know how quickly she runs off. You'd think I learned my lesson at the yoga studio. I'm leaving the phone at home next time I take her out."

"If you do that, how am I gonna call and give you my lunch order?"

Kate pushes herself off the couch, so that she's sitting on the rim, arms extended along her sides with both hands pressed into it. "This isn't funny, Castle. She could have been hurt so much worse."

"But she's not," I counter. "She's fine." My gaze drifts over to where Allegra's playing on the floor of the living room. She's on her knees, oblivious to the band-aid on one of them, babbling on about something or other. She's a resilient kid.

Kate closes her eyes and sighs. "Almost two years later and I'm still lousy at this."

"What?" I have no idea what she's talking about.

She turns to me. "Motherhood. I'm awful at it."

I chuckle a little. Surely she's joking. "You're an amazing Mom."

"I'm not," she shoots back. Dead serious. "We both know it."

"Excuse me?"

"You look after her every single day, all day long and manage not to kill her. Me, I spend an hour with her once a week and bring her back bruised and bloodied."

"Did you forget about that bump on her head from when she ran into the heater last week? Pretty sure that happened under my watch."

"I can't even stop her from crying..."

I raise both my eyebrows as I look at my wife. She's the one who looks like she's close to tears now.

It's all so ridiculous and untrue, I don't even know what to say or what to do. There are plenty of times Allegra's gotten hurt while I look after her, plenty of times that it's Kate who gets her to stop crying, not me. But she seems to have forgotten all that right now.

So I settle for taking one of her hands into mine and run a thumb along the top of it, hoping my chubby fingers are as comforting to her as they are to our daughter. "Are you done beating yourself up?" I ask after a few moments.

"If you tell me I'm an amazing cop, I might buy it, Rick. But I'm not an amazing Mom. Not by a long stretch."

"Yeah, you are."

"How can you...?"

"You stayed," I cut her off. "That's amazing to me."

Kate gives me a puzzled look. She doesn't quite get what I mean by that.

I've never told her how afraid I was that she might not. Stay, that is.

As cocky and self-assured as I can appear to the rest of the world, the truth is, having your first wife leave you to raise your daughter alone can do a number on you. You don't even realize it or acknowledge it but there's an insecurity of sorts that worms its way into your system and settles there. Worst of all it lingers, no matter how much you want to flush it out. Or pretend it doesn't exist.

I know first hand that raising a brand-new baby is the most challenging and unglamorous job in the world. It comes with the kind of sleep deprivation usually reserved for inmates at Guantanamo. And, honestly, no matter what the baby bloggers say, the first six months don't bring a whole lot of rewards either.

Meredith began leaving us only four weeks after she gave birth, when Alexis got colicky and cried all the time. At first she just left for a few hours to get out the house. Then a few hours would turn into a few days. I didn't even blame her at the time. There were plenty of moments when I wanted to leave too. There's only so much endless crying you can stand before you're afraid of losing your sanity.

But I stayed. Mostly because someone had to and partly because I already loved that little girl so much it outweighed everything else. By the time Alexis started teething, Meredith was seeing someone else and only stopped by about once a month.

This time around I often lose sleep not because Allegra's keeping me up at night, but because I wonder what Kate's breaking point will be.

Although we stopped using birth control not long after we got married, kids and domestic bliss was never something that we yearned for. I mean we did, we wanted to have a baby, but not in the way that some couples do, like Kevin and Jenny for instance. For them not having children would have been unfathomable. For us it wasn't. Had Beckett not gotten pregnant naturally, we weren't about to consider in-vitro and all sorts of other efforts. We'd have been perfectly fine without kids.

Of course that knowledge only added to my fear.

Like Meredith, Kate's a beautiful woman (What can I say? We all have a weakness. Beautiful women are mine). She's smart and ambitious. A workaholic and a bit of a thrill-seeker who could be with anyone she chooses, including billionaire geniuses like Eric Vaughn. How long would it be before Kate Beckett decided that dirty diapers, a tired husband and a screaming baby wasn't her thing?

It's a stupid, baseless fear. Just as silly as Kate's fear of not being a good mother. I know that. Beckett hasn't done a thing to suggest that she doesn't want this or that she'd ever leave us. It seems grossly unfair to her to even harbour these thoughts. It's why I can't bear to tell her.

But that doesn't mean they've gone away.

Nearly two happy years as a family later, the fear is still there. The thought that one day she'll decide she's had enough, walk out the door and not come back. It paralyses me sometimes, often out of nowhere, and usually at around three in the morning, when I watch her sleeping next to me, blissfully unaware of my morbid thoughts. It's like a panic attack that I have no control over. Thankfully, it doesn't last. I usually come to my senses by morning.

"What do you mean?" Kate asks me softly.

"I, uh..." I'm not sure how I want to say this. I'm not ready to admit this out loud. But at the same time I need her to know how ridiculous she's being. That I'm not being facetious or patronizing when I tell her she's an amazing Mom.

Because she is.

"You get up and pace around the loft with her in your arms all night when she's teething, even when you have to work the next day..." I start.

"Castle..."

"You run to the drug store at night when she's got a fever. You take her off my hands on Sundays so I can write. You slipped the mall Santa fifty bucks when Allegra puked all over his beard last Christmas. " There's something else that springs to my mind. Something that makes me smile. "Remember when I had that super important meeting at Black Pawn two months ago and our sitter cancelled at the last minute? You just grabbed the Snugly and took her to work with you. Took a cardboard box from the evidence room, moved it next to your desk, tossed a blanket inside and put our daughter in it."

I'll never forget the sight of Allegra sleeping in an evidence box when I went to the precinct to pick her up that afternoon after my meeting. I think Beckett might've made NYPD history that day.

"I'm still not used to it sometimes," I confess. "Not having to do all this by myself. Having someone around to do it with me. Someone who...loves it."

For a moment, Kate doesn't say anything but I can tell by the way she's looking at me that she knows what I mean now. I hope it's enough for her to never doubt herself as a mother again.

Her hand slips out of mine and she cups my face with both of her hands, before leaning in to kiss me. I love it when she pulls me into her space and kisses me like that. It's gentle and tender, but it's also possessive and proprietary. It's her way of letting me know I'm hers. Hers alone.

"You know..." she sighs when we're done and we've both pulled away. "I've gotten to like Meredith over the years but I'll never in my wildest dreams understand how she could walk away from all this. From you...and your daughter." For a second, I get lost in her eyes and her words. "I'd fight for it. Because I can't imagine ever giving this up. This beautiful life with you. You know, that, right?"

"Yeah..." The word gets caught in my throat like a giant lump. "I know." I do know this, in spite of my foolish fear.

But I think there's a part of me that needed to hear her say it.

"Good," she nods.

Allegra's decided she's done playing with the toy elephant and she's next to us again, tugging at Kate's jeans. Tired of being ignored. Our daughter looks pretty funny all covered in band-aids.

"Come here, Potato," Kate reaches for her, her strong arms pulling Allegra up onto her lap. "I can't believe you've got me calling her that too. We're going to stop calling her that when she gets older, aren't we?"

"Yes," I say solemnly. "We'll stop calling her Potato when she gets older." (Unless of course she still looks like one when she's older. Then all bets are off).

Okay, so she doesn't really look like a potato.

I came up with the nickname because Allegra has this funny habit of falling asleep face-down on the floor. She simultaneously pulls her legs in underneath her body and sticks her butt into the air just before falling asleep. One time I caught her wrapping herself in a light brown blanket when she did it. It looked like there was a giant potato lying in the middle of our living room.

Now she's lying face down on her mother's stomach. Bet it won't be long before she's asleep there.

For some reason the image makes me think of Alexis when she was that age. When Meredith would come over and spend some time with her. I'd constantly nudge Alexis towards her mother no matter how often she came crawling back to me.

Because no matter how upset I may have been with Meredith, I always wanted her to have a relationship with our daughter. I knew Alexis might not need it when she was a toddler, but at some point she would. And that meant they needed to have a connection to begin with.

So they did have one, but it was never like this. Even at two-years old, Alexis would never have done this. She'd never seek out her mother and fall asleep on her, the way Allegra does, like it's the most natural thing in the world. She instinctively knows that she's safe and secure there. I don't have to nudge Allegra towards her mother, she gravitates towards Kate all on her own.

Part of me feels sad, that Alexis never had this.

It doesn't take long for Allegra to fall asleep. Our potato looks more like a sack of potatoes now, with her face squished into Kate's chest and her limbs hanging off to the sides.

I get up and offer to lift up our daughter and put her into her bed. Because that won't be comfortable for Kate for long. Allegra's getting heavier. She's not a baby anymore.

"No...it's okay," Beckett protests, stroking our sleeping daughter's back. "Leave her here. She's comfy."

"Okay." I'll make the offer again a bit later. When I know Kate won't turn me down.

Then I spot the cup of coffee I never got around to refilling and get up and grab it. Make my way into the kitchen to brew a fresh batch for both of us.

By the time it's done and I come back out into living room with two steaming mugs of coffee, they're both fast asleep. Done in by their playground stress. One on top of the other. It's seriously adorable.

I set down Kate's cup of coffee with a smirk. Maybe she'll wake up before it gets cold. Maybe she won't. Doesn't matter. She never gets enough sleep, so I kind of hope she doesn't.

I head back into my study, sit down at my desk and resume my writing where I left off.

Before long, I escape back into Nikki and Rook's world and find ways to add even more twists to the labyrinthine mazes I've already carved out for this story.

Occasionally I turn away from the screen and glance towards the living room where Kate and Allegra are still zonked out on the couch. They'll wake up soon and Allegra will probably distract us too much for me to keep writing. We'll need to cook lunch after all. But I don't care. The three women in my life, they're my whole world.

And I like that for the time being, at least two of them are back under the same roof as me.


End file.
